


Infield Fly Rule

by Truth



Category: Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Genre: Brotherhood in adversity, Fighting the Good Fight, Gen, Language Barrier, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 08:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17076887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truth/pseuds/Truth
Summary: It’s a lot harder to hate a person than it is to hate an idea, and they were sort of past that, at this point.  You can’t really sustain hate for someone you’d just had a two hour argument about the infield fly rule with.





	Infield Fly Rule

**Author's Note:**

  * For [savetomorrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/savetomorrow/gifts).



The thing about aerial combat is that you have a choice. You can track where you are - or you can track your opponent. The one who is trying to kill you. There’s a reason why your radio is the most important piece of your equipment after a fight. If you’ve been separated from your squadron, it helps to answer the question ‘where the hell am I and how do I get back to the guys?’.

You can cover a lot of territory in the air, when you’re pursuing or being pursued. It’s not uncommon to finish a hectic fight with no real idea which country you’re in, much less how to get back to base.

Still, Hank felt this was kind of extreme.

“So I’m guessing you don’t speak English, I don’t speak no Japanese, but we’ve agreed that there are more important things than killin’ each other right now. Right?”

His companion didn’t answer, still staring after the slowly departing giant ape, eyes wide.

Hank poked him in the leg. “Hey. I wanna get up, seeing as we’re not gonna kill each other now? I hope?”

The Japanese pilot blinked and looked down at Hank, having apparently entirely forgotten the American he’d been kneeling over when the huge creature appeared. Hank was lucky the knife he’d dropped hadn’t landed in him.

“Hi. Let me up?”

After a long moment of conflicting thought, at least judging by the expressions rapidly crossing his face, the Japanese pilot slowly got up. 

“Thanks.” Hank watched as the enemy - well, that’d had the brakes put on it for the moment - hard to sustain a hard-on for your country and war in general when you saw something like that. That ape’s expression had put the one of disappointment his mama used to turn on him to shame. Yeah. He watched the other guy retrieved his knife and his sword, checking both before slowly putting them away. “What’s your name?”

No response, other than a frown.

“Well great. We’re gonna have to figure out how to communicate, I guess. I mean, I feel safer if it’s you’n me against whatever’s out there. I mean, apes gotta eat, right? And at that size, probably a lot. And if he’s so big, probably everything else is gonna be big too, right? Or at least bigger’n us. Safety first.”

Hank was babbling, but he felt somewhat justified. He was probably in shock. Something about that huge, stern face had seemed more than a tad judgemental. It had certainly shaken him to his core, although that judgement hadn’t seemed to actually lead anywhere. The other guy looked a bit panicked too, though he’d managed to cover it up pretty good. His hands had still been shaking when he’d put away his blades. Not that Hank could judge. He wasn’t still mostly lying on the ground because it was comfortable. Nah, it was because he wasn’t sure his knees wouldn’t give out on him.

“Lessee, what did they tell us to say if we were captured. Um… Watashi wa nihongo o hanasemasen. Um. Watashi wa chūidesu. Watashinonamaeha Hank Marlow. That’s all the Japanese I know, and I’ve been told it’s pretty bad.” Hank looked hopefully at the other guy.

There was a very long pause. “Watashinonamaeha Ikari Gunpei.”

“Okay, so that’s… I remember this. Ikari’s your family name, then. And Gunpei is your given name. I can do that.” Hank slowly pushed himself off the ground and joined Gunpei in staring after the figure of the ape. “Ain’t that a kick in the nuts?”

Gunpei helped him with some makeshift bandages for his hands, once they found Hank’s scarf. 

It was Gunpei’s idea to go back to the beach, expressed by his simply heading carefully back the way they’d come. The terrain was a lot rougher than either of the men had realized, caught up in their frantic chase. Kill or be killed really didn’t give you a lot of time to appreciate the native flora and fauna, though they were scrutinizing both with deep suspicion now.

“I was always a city kid, but we did survival trainin’. You know, in case we went down and had to live off the land.” Hank eyed a nearby plant warily as he retrieved his Mae West from where he’d discarded it while running. “Ain’t much of this stuff looks familiar.”

Either Gunpei just didn’t talk much, or he was unwilling to participate in a conversation he didn’t understand. He did look at the plant, though.

When they reached the beach, they separated, each searching the larger bits of wreckage and fishing about to see what could be salvaged. Hank had one of the kits they gave fliers in Europe - most of it useless, particularly the maps, but it held a few bits of useful survival gear. He’d traded a really good set of cards and a pack of cigarettes for it. He found his first aid kit, still strapped to a bit of the cockpit, and the blanket he’d stashed there as well. Flying was cold, darn it. His abandoned pistol was useless without bullets, so he tucked it into the wreck. 

“Not much in here for living it rough. Odds were I’d land in the ocean anyway.” He rolled everything up in the blanket, and headed to gather up the parachutes. “Waste not, want not.”

Gunpei’s Zero had lodged in the trees, not on the beach proper, and there was a lot more left of the plane itself than of Hank’s P-51. The supplies he had laid out were meagre, to say the least, and he didn’t look particularly pleased with them.

“I’d heard you guys were having problems with supply,” Hank noted, peering over his shoulder at the tiny first aid kit and spare boots - which were probably Gunpei’s own idea, and not any issue of the air force. “Man, your Zero’s a mess.”

He wasn’t referring to the crash, either. The plane looked… rough. He walked over to the wreckage, running his hands along a bit of the fuselage. “That is a lot of mud.”

Sighing, Gunpei rattled something off that Hank was mildly impressed by, despite not understanding a word. It sounded unhappy and probably insulting. Given that he was gesturing to the plane, it probably wasn’t directed at Hank. At least not personally. 

Hank clapped Gunpei on the shoulder, startling him. “You’n me? We need to get us some language lessons.”

The island was a definite learning experience, and not just in terms of language. It took six weeks before Gunpei and Hank could communicate things slightly more abstract than ‘go’, ‘stop’, ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘rest’, and ‘danger’. ‘Run away’ featured highly in their most used words.

Those same six weeks of working their way along the jagged shoreline, finally brought the realization that the storm they’d flown through appeared to be a more or less permanent presence. “Ain’t that a kick in the pants? No one’s gonna be lookin’ for us through that.”

“Looking? Went down water.” Gunpei scoffed. “Dead.”

“You can’t ever look on the bright side?”

Not that there looked to be much of a bright side, other than the nearly constant heat and pleasant weather. The storm occasionally moved far enough to sheet water down on the island, and it was nearly impossible to stay dry unless huddled under the larger leafed bushes. 

They were both sick for several days after drinking the water from the streams, but it eventually passed.

Closer to the shore, they saw normal looking sea birds. They caught themselves some fish, with a small net made out of torn and twisted parachute silk. They caught some odd-looking crabs as well, which was easier. Hank had some waterproof matches and a lighter, and they used them sparingly. Gunpei showed Hank how to steam the crabs, using driftwood, some rocks, and piles of seaweed. They didn’t want to venture into the undergrowth of the island itself, not with the big ape out there somewhere. This turned out to be a smart move.

The first time they ran into hostile wildlife, it was the strangest darn thing Hank had ever seen. Like someone had taken a mosquito and shoved it inside a lizard the size of a goose. Or something. “I saw this movie,” Hank whispered, as he and Gunpei watched the things soar overhead after they’d attacked and torn apart a cow-looking creature the size of a truck “It was called ‘Son of Ingagi’. It was all about this monster some doctor lady found in the jungle and brought back with her. I’m startin’ to believe it wasn’t fiction.”

Gunpei had a sense of humour, though it tended to the dark. This wasn’t discovered by Hank until they each had a fairly good grasp on each other’s language. What had seemed to be pessimism turned out to be a sardonic sense of humour, dry enough to cut.

By then, they had their first attempt to leave the island behind them, resulting in a wrecked raft, a lost fishing net, a destroyed parachute sail, and Hank’s case of pneumonia from accidentally inhaled water. They hadn’t even made it to the storm, attacked by something with a lot of tentacles at a size neither of them were, at first, willing to believe.

Hank’s illness kept him tucked up in a tiny rocky cave with what was left of their blankets for several weeks, while Gunpei experimented with various seafood soups. Their language skills improved greatly while Hank had nothing better to do, and Gunpei chose not to do any exploring alone.

After the lizard goose mosquito things, Hank would’ve made the same decision. Still, it was hard to be laid up, feverish, coughing, and having trouble breathing. Gunpei refused to be around him without a mask - and Hank could respect that, too. Having both of them sick would probably lead to death. At least this way, Gunpei could look after him till he was back on his feet.

They learned a lot about each other.

Gunpei didn’t have a wife, though Hank did. Instead, he had a sister.

“Younger,” Gunpei told him, passing him the carved wooden mug they were using for water. “I take care of her.”

“No parents?”

“No. Now - she stays with…” he frowned, making a gesture. “Woman. Family.”

“Grandma? Aunt?”

“Aunt.” Gunpei had more trouble remembering specific words when he spoke in English, though he understood basic English easily enough at this point. 

Hank’s problem was that he couldn’t string together a sentence properly in Japanese. Gunpei would repeat back to him exactly what he’d said, only in English, and they’d both have a good laugh at the gibberish. The words would all be there, just none of them in the correct order. They had started using their own language for words they didn’t have or didn’t remember, and correcting each other. It was working, even if the occasional misunderstanding caused confusion.

“So she’s with your aunt. Do you miss her?”

“She is a pest,” Gunpei assured him, lips twitching faintly. 

“You do miss her.”

“I do.” He frowned at the tiny fire he’d kept going now for almost a week. “She will think - pilots who go down in the sea….”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. Telegrams would have already gone out for the both of them - missing, presumed dead. There was no way they were going to be found. They were on their own. Gunpei’s first aid kit had several maps shoved into it, and none of them showed the island they were on. It was too big, and someone would’ve mentioned the monsters.

If they’d gotten away alive.

When Hank was finally well enough to continue their exploration, they’d managed to carve themselves a bucket, of sorts, as well as their water mugs. There were strange, almost-deer that grazed near the edges of the rivers, and Gunpei had carefully tried a few of the plants the almost-deer ate, so they were expanding their diet.

It had been three months. While their language skills had improved a lot, that was the only triumph they'd had. It was difficult, trying to explore the shores of the island. There were a lot of cliffs, and they had to be careful. A broken limb, even if they survived a fall, could still be deadly.

“This place is beautiful.”

Gunpei sure wasn’t wrong. The cliffs were a pain to maneuver around, but they were gorgeous. They’d started taking more time to stop and just… experience the land around them. They were stuck here, at least for the moment. Might as well enjoy it as much as they could before they made their escape.

“You know what ain’t beautiful?” Hank gestured to their left. “That, that ain’t beautiful.”

The huge ape was slowly wading along the edge of one of the huge rivers that meandered along the base of the cliffs.

“No,” Gunpei agreed, turning to catch sight of the mountain of black fur as it moved through the water. “But he is impressive.”

“Yeah, true enough.”

It was the first time they’d seen the ape since their arrival, and he still inspired fear and respect, even at a distance of at least a mile. They stood, watching his steady progress along the river, and how the wildlife, small or large, simply went about their business.

“Not a predator,” Gunpei observed. “Apes eat vegetables. Insects.”

“I don’t care if he’s Queen of the May, something that size is terrifying.”

Gunpei laughed, softly. “The animals are not afraid. He did not kill us. Perhaps he is peaceful.”

“Got a hard time believin’ it,” Hank said.

“Not everything large is dangerous.” Gunpei gestured at the animals down by the river. They’d looked cow sized, at least until Kong had strode past them. Some of them were larger than a city bus.

“Yeah, but it could still step on you.”

They did a lot of talking as the weeks passed and foreign words came more easily to them both. They talked about their families, about their childhoods, about their interests and hobbies. 

They didn’t discuss their temporary cease-fire, or the fact that it would probably end the moment they got back to their respective people. As if ignoring it would make it easier. Which it kinda did. It’s a lot harder to hate a person than it is to hate an idea, and they were sort of past that, at this point. You can’t really sustain hate for someone you’d just had a two hour argument about the infield fly rule with. (Complete with the occasional misremembered word or phrase.) Harder still to resent someone who spent a week and a half hauling water, putting cold seaweed on your head, and making you crab soup, while you lay on your ass and complained a lot. Difficult to want to kill someone who wanted to know everything about you and your culture and your family, and be enthusiastic about all of it.

So they ignored it. It could wait until they got off the island.

Their plans to leave the island were dealt a highly unpleasant blow when they reached the northern end.

“Mother of God,” Hank breathed. 

Gunpei said nothing at all. From their vantage atop a hill, they looked down into the swampy mouth of a river, where brackish water ebbed and flowed. Just beyond where the river met the shore, a veritable forest of wrecks had been driven aground by the tides and currents.

The age of some of those wrecks and the heavy damage they’d sustained on their journey through the storm did not argue well for the chances of a pair of pilots. Especially when the combined boating experience of those two pilots translated to the occasional trip in a small fishing boat, and two weeks at a Boy Scout camp some eight years ago.

“Salvage,” Gunpei finally said.

“Yeah, I guess. But we’re gonna have to find a place to store anything useful. I mean, it’s pretty open down there. Don’t know what we might - holy shit!”

Gunpei dove for the nearest cover, dragging Hank with him. “Shhhh!”

Down below, the almost-deer and a few of the bus-cows (Hank had argued for calling them Bus-Yaks but had been overruled) had stopped their leisurely feeding and were looking around anxiously. What they couldn’t see, but Gunpei and Hank could, thanks to their current elevation, were three of the scariest looking things Hank could ever have imagined.

The hand over his mouth indicated that Gunpei was, by now, well aware of Hank’s habit of babbling when he was upset, and that he was just as unsettled as Hank was.

The… the things that were stalking slowly through the water, threading their way between the wreckage, were just… they were just wrong, that’s what. With long, muscular looking tails, only two legs and no other limbs, and a long, bony head - they looked like someone had jammed legs on a particularly ugly looking snake, and their movement gave Hank the chills.

“Predators,” Gunpei whispered.

Had he been able to talk, Hank would’ve agreed. Eyes wide above Gunpei’s hand, he watched as the things slipped through the water. The moment the first of the big herbivores noticed them, all hell pretty literally broke loose.

The things made this… unholy growling howl and lunged. The other animals scattered, moving pretty fast, but the things, oh, they were faster. It was ugly and violent and fast, with rending and tearing and swallowing and -

Neither man moved, watching it all as it unfolded, and the things vanished back into the growth alongside the river almost as quickly as they’d come, leaving bits of torn animals behind to turn the river water slowly red.

Hank reached up, eventually, to move Gunpei’s hand. “Maybe, maybe we should rethink that salvage thing.”

“No.” Gunpei’s voice was flat with determination. “We must get off this island.”

Well, Hank couldn’t argue with that.

They were careful, almost paranoid, when they finally made it down the hill and started stealthily for the nearest wreck. It was almost anti-climactic when they reached it without anything lunging out of nowhere to rend them limb from limb. Didn’t mean they weren’t thankful for it.

The way the wrecks had washed ashore meant that the oldest ships were on the edge they were closest to. They’d had to pick their way through some tricky footing, rotted timbers and bits of metal that were all that was left of some of the first ships to end up here. The first few days found just bits of rusted metal and, in one memorable case, a pile of real, honest to god, cannon balls.

“There’s some bits and pieces out there I think came from some kinda Polynesian raft things. You think this place has been eating sailors for centuries?”

“I think there are many legends of a shrouded island, one that destroys ships and their sailors.” Gunpei was staring wistfully at what once had probably been a powder keg of some kind. “There have always been such stories. Sailors love to frighten themselves and others.”

“What, ‘here be monsters’? Well, they got that much right.” Hank sighed. “We should try somethin' a little more modern.”

“There is a… ship. That way.”

English/Japanese vocabulary exchange was necessarily limited by each man’s personal vocabulary, and neither man knew much about oceanic exploration and shipping.

The ship that Gunpei wanted to explore was one of the more recent of the wrecks, more or less in one piece, save for a missing bit of hull. It was modern enough, or at least didn’t look like a pirate ship from one of Errol Flynn’s movies.

They climbed in through the break in the hull, discovering bits and pieces of what had probably once been the cargo. “Hey, you think we could find clothes in here?”

Gunpei paused. Their flight suits weren’t doing so well, given the rough use they’d been given. Spare clothing would allow them to save their ‘real’ clothes, and help them verify their identity when they escaped. It was a good idea, and he said so, adding “We know the raft will not be enough. We should also look for fuel.”

“That’s a great idea! You want to look for equipment, or clothes?”

“Clothes.”

Hank did find fuel, not a lot of it, and mostly by dint of discovering the engine room. Which wasn’t at all where he was expecting it. “Lookit this. Tools, a manual… we could figure somethin’ out.”

When he tracked down Gunpei, the other man was in one of the crew cabins, sitting awkwardly on one of the cramped bunks, examining the contents of a small cupboard.

“What’d ya find?” Hank hung forward in the doorway. “Anything good?”

“Clothes,” Gunpei said. “And - books.”

“Books?” That was something Hank hadn’t thought much about, and he suddenly missed them. “What kinda books?”

“Empty ones.” Gunpei showed him a handful of exercise books. “We could - keep a record.”

In case we don’t make it out. Or in case only one of us does. Hank filed that away carefully under ‘we’re not going to talk about this’. “Sure. We just need to find some pencils or somethin’ - and somethin’ to keep ‘em in. This island sure is wet.”

Gunpei nodded. He held up a rucksack and smiled. “Other good things.”

There were mess kits. Real cutlery and dishes. More matches, though most of them were damp. Waterproof bags to carry their things in. Tinned food, because something had already gotten into what was left of the mess, or whatever you called a kitchen pantry on a boat, and a few other useful odds and ends.

It was amazing what a difference finding a simple bar of soap made to their mood.

That night, sacked out in the crew quarters on adjoining bunkbeds, looking up through a crack in the deck at the streaks of color in the night sky, Hank asked, “D’you think we’ll really get off this island? I mean, in one piece?”

“Maybe not in one piece,” Gunpei said. “But - we will leave this place.”

“D’you think any of these people tried to escape?”

There was a long silence this time, but it was finally broken by a soft huff of breath that was almost a laugh. “Maybe. But they were sailors. We are pilots. We are obviously superior.”

Hank laughed, long and loud. “You got that right.”

Bravado and shared rivalry was sometimes needed more desperately than common sense, and Gunpei was good at finding those moments.

Neither of them wanted to risk staying too long amongst the wrecks, so they took whatever useful tools and equipment they could find, along with a few barrels of fuel, and stored it in the hull of the merchant ship ‘Alfred Traeger’. Securing it as best they could, they again set out, very carefully, across the wide open space of the river mouth - heading this time for the jungle.

Their progress was achingly slow. Despite fewer (slightly fewer) cliffs, they had undergrowth to deal with, a strange plant that was not unlike poison oak, and they both remembered those snakey, creepy things.

Some three months passed, and both men were far easier in the other’s language. They spoke Japanese during the day, because Hank liked to talk, and English in the evening. Gupei preferred to talk when they were settled for the night, when he could relax and find the words more easily.

“Did you always wanna be a pilot?”

“My grandfather was a fisherman. So was my father. When my mother died, it was my job to look after my sister - and then my father’s boat was caught in a storm. After that, I needed to find a job that would pay enough to support my sister.” Gunpei sighed. “They needed pilots, and it paid well enough.”

“Huh. I wanted to be a pilot because it looked… heroic. Like somethin’ you’d read about in the dime novels. Turns out it’s a lot of panickin’ and being shot at.”

“True.” Gunpei smiled. “We were supposed to be heroic. It didn’t always work so well.”

That was as close as they came to discussing the elephant, or ape, in the room.

They saw the ape himself a few more times, always at a more comfortable distance than that first encounter. They didn’t see the things again. Not for a while.

Gunpei started keeping a rough map in his journal. He was a fair artist, and it helped them to keep track of where they’d been and made backtracking much faster. They argued, sometimes, about what to name the various rivers and streams. Hank was not allowed to name any of the various animals they saw, on the basis that all the names were both overly simplistic and too literal.

“Too literal? I’m tryin’ to tell people what they are! That’s not too literal, that’s just efficient!”

They were fairly happy with their map of the north eastern part of the island and decided to head south along the eastern coast.

“More cliffs. I think you just enjoy watchin’ me suffer.”

They made their way along the eastern coast, making much better time than their initial trip, thanks in part to fewer cliffs. Well, fewer cliffs on the island proper. The jutting islets were well out in the water, and there were fewer rivers to ford.

Nearing the southern tip of the island, they had their second encounter with the snake… things.

Their trip through the jungle had been pleasantly broken by a damp, swampy plain. Neither of them were particularly comfortable with being out of cover, having seen the lizard goose mosquito things feeding quite a few more times since the first. Still, it would be nice to see the sun, and the swampy area would allow them to catch some of the fish that liked to linger there, and gather the greens that Gunpei liked.

They were being cautious, moving slowly, keeping as much to cover as possible. Hank was watching their footing, and Gunpei was keeping a wary eye on the sky. They passed some of the bus cows, which Gunpei had grown fond of and Hank still held would one day step on him and crush him to death. Just as they were quietly arguing about whether or not to try to catch some fish before dark, the nearest bus cow let out a bellow of alarm.

It was all the warning they had, and as far as warnings went, came far too little and far too late. Hank and Gunpei were almost in the middle of the wide open space, with insufficient cover and neither of them could move at anywhere near the speed they’d need to evade the large, horrific creature that was lunging and slithering toward them.

“We’re gonna die,” was Hank’s fatalistic opinion, as he readied the crude spear he’d been carrying for several weeks. He’d gotten very good at spear fishing - which this was decidedly not.

“Fumeiyo no mae no shi,” was Gunpei’s reply.

“That’s a terrible attitude!”

The thing was almost upon them when an enormous hand swept Hank out of the way, sending him flying into the water.

“Oh shiiiiiit!”

Gunpei was already moving in the opposite direction, as fast as he could run, as the giant ape stepped past him and launched itself at the snake monster. Hank landed with a huge splash, almost impaling himself on his spear, and dragged himself toward solid land. He couldn’t seem to pull his eyes from the titanic struggle taking place just a few hundred yards away.

There was something mind boggling about the sheer scale of the conflict. The ground actually shook as the ape and the snake monster collided, water sloshing up as the marsh sank beneath their weight.

“Gonna get squished, gonna die, gonna be so embarrassin’ -” Hank scrambled away backwards, fumbling with his spear, as the two enormous creatures fell, rolling around in the water.

They seemed fairly evenly matched, Hank decided, as he spotted Gunpei curving back around, heading for Hank. Hank was definitely rooting for the ape. Those snake things -

“Gunpei! To your left! To your left!”

Gunpei made a nearly ninety degree turn and ran even faster, that turn of speed saving his life as a second ape landed almost where he’d been standing and hurled itself toward the fight in progress.

Hank made ‘hurry up, hurry up’ gestures as he backed away from what was rapidly becoming a massacre. “Come on, come on - not gonna die, not gonna die. Gotta run, gotta run!”

“I am running,” Gunpei snarled. “Stop your babbling!”

Hank headed to meet him, and both men turned to run as quickly as they could from the violence. “Which way?”

“Toward that… wall.”

“Wall, what wall? Oh. Oooh. Right, running toward the wall!”

It was an imposing wall, one that loomed out of the fog, becoming larger and more impressive as they hastened toward it. It bristled with spikes that were both huge and far too widely spaced to be meant to keep humans out. It was a promising sign.

“Is there a way through?”

“If not, we will make one.”

Hank had seen Gunpei’s sword work before, and it was impressive… but they wouldn’t want to risk their only blade on cutting through a wall. Even if it was made of wood. Still, it was an impressive statement of intent. Plus, you never knew with Gunpei. It was possible that he had some plan or experience with giant wooden walls to draw on. Or he could just be angry enough to climb the thing. Gunpei had a hell of a temper.

The sounds behind them died away as they raced for the wall. Neither man gave in to the urge to look over their shoulder, instead searching the impassive face of the wall for any crack or gap or door.

“There!” Gunpei pointed to the wall. It wasn’t a door, but a small gap in the wall - just big enough for a human to fit through.

They didn’t slow as they reached the gap, Gunpei’s greater speed allowing him to squeeze through first, hurling himself out of the way so that Hank could race through on his heels.

“We made it, we made it!”

Gunpei ignored him, already peering out through the gap back the way they’d come. “The apes won.”

“Good!” Hank moved to peer over his shoulder. They watched silently as, in the foggy distance, the two huge creatures moved away and slowly vanished from sight. When they finally disappeared, he sank down onto his heels with a sigh of relief. “Maybe things’ll be safer on this side of the wall. Hey, who do you think built this thing? Shipwrecked sailors?”

“No.” Gunpei had turned to lean against the wall. “No, it wasn’t sailors.”

“Who then?”

“They did.”

“Who’s they?”

Gunpei gestured with the hand not holding the sword. “Them.”

Hank turned, and immediately fell on his ass. “Holy -!”

An entire crowd of silent people stood just a few yards away, watching them. Several held spears much more impressive than Hank’s, and none of them looked particularly happy to see the new arrivals.

Carefully, Gunpei sheathed his sword. Hank was still clutching his spear, although not in any fashion that indicated he was going to use it or even knew how. He was busy staring at the crowd of intricately painted strangers - and were those scars under the paint? It looked like writing, though not anything Hank had seen before.

“Um. Hi there? Did you build this wall? It’s a really great wall.”

“Good to know that you start every potentially traumatizing relationship the same way,” Gunpei muttered.

“Quiet. We want ‘em to like us. Then they’ll share their wonderful wall with us.”

The crowd remained silent, which Hank was starting to find unnerving.

“Look, if it’s okay with you, we’d like to stay. On this side of the wall. Not, you know, right here, just… um.”

Gunpei reached down and hauled Hank to his feet, forcibly pointing the spear away from their new acquaintances. Slowly, he took a step toward the waiting group. When they didn’t move, he took another, towing Hank along in his wake.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Ignoring him, Gunpei kept walking. His slow, deliberate pace turned out to have been a good choice. As they came within arm’s reach of the waiting group, it slowly drew away, leaving them a path through.

Gunpei kept walking, and Hank managed to keep his mouth shut as he stared at the strangers.

There was a village here, and although the wall explained why they hadn’t seen any other humans - well, no. The snake monsters and the lizard goose mosquito things explained why they hadn’t seen any other humans. The wall explained why these humans lived here.

They made it halfway through the tiny village before Gunpei came to a halt.

“I have so many questions.”

“Me too,” Hank agreed. “Starting with these blue guys.”

Gunpei just nodded. Standing before them, not quite barring their path, were a pair of people who seemed… older. Unlike the crowd at the wall, who’d been a mix of red and yellow paints, or the villagers, who wore mostly red, these two were the first and only blue painted people they’d seen.

“They look important.”

Letting go of Hank’s arm, Gunpei offered a respectful nod that didn’t quite become a bow. “We are strangers to your island, lost travelers. We would like your permission to stay.”

The pair before them did not move, watching. Waiting.

“Look, we don’t wanna stay forever. We just want a chance to rest. To be safe. Just for a while.” Gunpei was good with words and with physical things. Like swords and personal violence. Hank was good at just being… Hank. Sincere, inventive, and hoping for the best. And a pretty good spear fisherman, darn it.

Some of that sincerity must’ve shown through, because the two blue people slowly returned Gunpei’s respectful nod - and stepped aside.

“... you think they can help us get off this island?”

Gunpei shrugged, slowly starting forward again. “You saw the wall. I think that if they could leave, they would. We’re on our own, Hank.”

“On our own,” Hank echoed, reaching out to grasp Gunpei by the shoulder, waiting until the other man turned to face him. “On our own - together.”

There was a brief pause, the one that meant Gunpei was thinking over his answer carefully. Eventually, he smiled, brief and small. “Together.”


End file.
